The French aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle crossed the Suez Canal this week, it is heading towards the Arabian Sea which it should reach in a week. A “signal” that the coalition put together by London and Paris stands ready to secure the Strait of Hormuz. The aircraft carrier and its escort are able to bring together a naval coalition and to pilot a deconfliction operation in the strait, the carrier group could also equip itself with new means of defense.
What if the solution to protecting a naval coalition was the Tiger? The Army’s Tiger helicopter was tested last March in the United Arab Emirates and, with its 30 mm cannon and two baskets of 22 rockets, it proved to be truly effective and dissuasive against Iranian drones. So, if the navy were to engage in an operation to secure Hormuz, it would like to have Tigers on board its frigates, indicates Admiral Thibault de Possesse. He commands the carrier group and we questioned him a week ago on the bridge of the Charles-de-Gaulle, which was then in the Eastern Mediterranean.
« Recently, we validated, thanks to the efforts of the DGA [Direction générale de l’armement] and the efforts of the navy and the army, the use of Tiger helicopters on the frigates of the national navy, explains the admiral. And so we are able today to land and take off from navy frigates these combat helicopters which are armed and which are adapted to intercepting drones. They demonstrated today to the United Arab Emirates their effectiveness in the face of this type of threat.”
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The Tiger, a complement to the Rafale
L’amiral Thibault de Possesse poursuit : « It’s an excellent complement [aux Rafale qui tirent, eux, des missiles Mica]. Firstly because it is a little cheaper. But above all, it allows you to have an additional layer of defense. The Rafales are far away, the helicopters are closer and, as a last resort, we have escort boats which can escort either the aircraft carrier or other boats if necessary, as we do today in Bab-el-Mandeb.”
If the naval operation to end the blockade sees the light of day, it will be necessary to be able to quickly deploy military means to prevent possible friction. The arrival of army combat helicopters on the boats of the Marine nationale would therefore be a guarantee of reassurance to secure civilian buildings, assures Admiral Thibaud de Possesse. “The return of drones shows that competitors, potential adversaries, are trying to take us on the wrong foot and are trying to use very low-cost offensive weapons so that we exhaust ourselves spending rare and very expensive weapons such as our missiles, which outperform the threat, in reality, he analyzes. And so we, obviously, react and we come out with less expensive weapons that we finally have in our arsenal. We are also trying to build anti-drone drones.”
Tiger helicopters also for Charles-de-Gaulle?
« So placing a Tiger on the Charles-de-Gaulle is quite simple, but in reality, it is not of much interest because an aircraft carrier is very far from the threat and therefore a Shahed drone today would have a lot of difficulty finding an aircraft carrier which is moving elsewhere, which is far from the threat, explains the admiral. And therefore guiding it on an aircraft carrier represents a very significant challenge. It still has little chance of passing.”
The warm sea environment does not require marinizing devices. The Tiger helicopters of the Army’s light aviation could therefore embark very soon and this would be a real tactical and operational revolution.
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